Saving Money – Junior Style

Fun today and money tomorrow – that should be every young person’s money goal! 
How can you save, spend and grow your money?

Too bad, the spending part is easy, and sometimes the hardest one to resist. The world is full of items, clothes and toys that appeal to young people. If you tune in to TV commercials, they make it seem sometimes that if you DON’T have the latest new thing it makes you un-cool.  Not true!  But choosing the items that are most important to you for spending your money can help out-of-control money wasting become smart money management. 

Let’s say you are given $5.00 for a job you did for the neighbour, or for allowance, or even a birthday gift.  Smart money management means you would take at least half and put it into savings, and keep the rest for spending. This way, you are getting a nice benefit from the money today, but also keeping money for tomorrow.

Now, the higher the amount you have, the MORE that should go to savings. If you had $100.00, you wouldn’t want to go crazy spending half, or $50.00, on a bunch of nothing items.  So you would want to keep a reasonable amount for spending and a larger portion for saving.  Maybe $30.00 spending/$70.00 saving. 

Your parents can help you be smart with your money. If they are giving you an allowance, then they are already teaching you good money habits, so be sure to ask them what would be a good portion for savings out of each amount you have.

If you are hoping to buy something really expensive, then you can put a lot of it away and save up for that skateboard or i-Pod or whatever you really want.

What about the growing part? Well, having an account at your Credit Union, you probably already know a little bit about earning interest!  For every dollar you put into your account to save, you earn interest on that money. Over time, you even earn interest on the interest!  Wow!  It’s like a gift, given to you because you are a smart money manager!